The fifth season of Silicon Valleypremieres March 25, an occasion The Hollywood Reporter has marked with a lengthy check-in with the show’s cast and creators. The publication spoke with Mike Judge and Alec Berg about what lies ahead for the Pied Piper gang—a mixture of success and doom, naturally—as well as the…

In her recent review, Gwen Ihnat argues that Mike Judge’s new Tales From The Tour Bus promises to turn country music skeptics into fans, with Judge’s animated series bridging the divide through the universal appeal of stories about celebrities getting plastered and destroying shit. If true, it certainly wouldn’t be…

Mike Judge has long established himself as a gifted storyteller, from backyard tales of King Of The Hill to the dystopian stupidity of Idiocracy to a bunch of too-smart-for-their own-good developers in Silicon Valley. But as it turns out, Judge is pretty great at telling other people’s stories as well. In his new…

Last week, NBC bravely admitted that it would happily bring back every hit show it has ever had, even though the creators of those shows aren’t particularly interested, but it’s not the only network longing for a simpler time when ratings were higher and beloved shows could run for years and years. Speaking to the…

There’s an interesting meta component that runs through the events of “Success Failure,” the fourth season premiere of Silicon Valley. Our erstwhile hero Richard, having managed to stumble back into a position of strength, finds himself dissatisfied and constantly trying to tweak something to its detriment. After some…

The Peter principle was born in ’60s corporate America, but it’s not relegated to stuffy old workplaces—we basically see it in action every time a new series or film turns out to be a hit. Whether they’re in Hollywood or on Wall Street, executives can’t help but try to wring as much value out of any and every good…

Silicon Valley returns to HBO for its fourth season on April 23, and in advance of the premiere, The New York Times has run a lengthy profile of creator Mike Judge, the man behind other cult mainstays like Beavis And Butt-Head, Office Space, and Idiocracy. Judge has always been a fascinating figure, both for being a…

Hello friends, especially those living in or near Chicago, or who are willing to travel. As you may remember, we have presented a comedy festival in our fair city each of the past three years, along with our friends at The Onion and ClickHole. Well, we’re doing it again, with help from our returning title sponsor…

It’s been almost seven years since Mike Judge’s King Of The Hill went off the air, and though Silicon Valley (which Judge co-created) has been a reliable venue for comedy for the last few years, there’s still nothing quite like an old-fashioned Mike Judge animated series—aside from The Goode Family, which should just…

SF Sketchfest has just unleashed its massive, 17-day schedule of podcasts, stand-up shows, and live comedy events onto the world. Normally, we’d spend some time up top here talking about how the festival—scheduled for January 12 through January 29, 2017—is one of America’s longest-running and biggest comedy festivals,…

WhenIdiocracy was released in 2006, it didn’t make much of an impact upon the world. In fact, most people didn’t even know it existed. 20th Century Fox had a contractual obligation to release Mike Judge’s follow-up to Office Space, but they pretty much just tucked it away. After being sat on for more than a year, it…

Earlier this summer, we reported that Idiocracycollaborators Etan Cohen and Mike Judge were teaming up to make a series of apt “President Camacho”-themed anti-Trump ads. All they needed was the go ahead from 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights to the disturbingly prescient comedy from 2006. As it turns out, they…

Most animated shows, even those about supposedly ordinary suburban families and schoolkids, allow themselves to play fast and loose with reality, especially when reality is inconvenient for a joke. Characters on The SimpsonsandSouth Parkroutinely violate the laws of physics, and no one bats an eyelash. After all,…

Mike Judge has spent his career bouncing between animation—King Of The Hill, Beavis And Butt-Head—and live-action—Idiocracy, Office Space, Silicon Valley—with a tenacity and success rate rarely matched in Hollywood. Outside of his early Office Space shorts, though, Judge doesn’t usually blend his preferred mediums.…

One of the best things about watching Pied Piper’s journey through all its ups and downs is that there’s no one path to success for the company and its founders. It grew out of a mix of dumb luck and raw intellect, and since then has climbed to its current position by adding to the mix various measures of…

The comedy of Silicon Valley is one that’s frequently ruthless to its main characters. It’s unafraid to put them through all manner of personal and professional humiliations in service of entertaining the audience, reveling in the schadenfreude of watching them fail at what they set out to do. Yet as painful as that…

The central quest of Silicon Valley has always been a fight for individualism. While the story has at various points gone between questions of money, influence, and ego, all of it eventually boils down to the fact that the show’s heroes want to be in control of what they believe is theirs. Richard Hendrix, who was…

Americans have worried about the extent to which life has imitated the art of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy pretty much since the satire premiered in 2006, which was three years after Jackass’ Steve-O stapled his scrotum to his leg onstage. But with sentient Simpsons gag Donald Trump out there confusing convenience with…